Meetings

We have a project meeting twice a month on Tuesday at 17:00 UTC in the #themereview channel on Slack. Second Tuesday in the month is open floor and the fourth Tuesday is with a fixed agenda. Tuesday at 17:00 UTC.

The review duration varies. Each theme is reviewed manually, line by line, so there is no precise timeframe on when your theme will be reviewed. Themes are reviewed on a first come first serve basis, you can keep track of your themes position in the queue here:

Yes. Any plugins that are recommended must be from the WordPress.org plugin repository. Plugins from 3rd party sites or bundling plugins directly with the theme is not permitted.

The theme must work fully without the need to install any recommended plugins. Moreover, recommended plugins should be relevant and integrated somehow to your theme. Adding plugins in the recommended list just for advertising purpose is not allowed.

Theme authors should ensure they understand every single line of their code. There is currently no automated method to detect strings that need to be made translation ready, as such please review your code line by line to detect such issues.

There are a number of plugins that can be used to aid in this task (e.g. Pig Latin). However, such plugins should not be seen as an alternative to manually reviewing your theme code in full.

If there is no response from the assigned reviewer for 48 hours, you are free to contact a theme mod either in-ticket or via Slack in the #themereview channel. Abandoned tickets will be returned back to the review queue giving the opportunity for a new reviewer to continue the review.

Themes can be updated in the same way as a new theme submission. Please login to your WordPress account and navigate to wordpress.org/themes/upload. You can upload your theme as normal.

When uploading your theme please ensure that the version number is higher than the version currently in the repository. The update will be set live shortly after submission and is not manually reviewed. Regardless, your theme must comply with the latest WordPress guidelines. Circumventing guidelines through abuse of the automated review for updates may result in theme suspensions.

Comment in the most recent ticket for your theme cc’ing a team leader to request your theme be removed from the repository. Alternatively, please contact a team leader in the #themereview channel on Slack. You can find team leaders here.

Tickets can be updated when in the admin a queue. However, it is discouraged as the final reviewer may need to review your entire theme again. Additionally, a new ticket will be created recognizing the update as a new submission. This will not impact your position in the review queue, as the final reviewer will pick the ticket from the admin queue as normal.

According to “one active ticket per author” rule effective from 23 August 2016, an author is allowed to have only one active tickets in the system. Author cannot submit new theme until their earlier ticket is closed as either not-approved or set live.

Anyone can pick a ticket for review, if you don’t have the permission level to assign a ticket to yourself please simply pick the first theme in the queue and make a comment pinging a team lead requesting that the ticket be assigned to yourself.

A Theme Reviewer badge will appear for the reviewer on their wordpress.org profile page after the reviewer is promoted to the Reviewer status from Trainee Reviewer status. This is a manual process with the team leads managing the assignment. There is no specific number of reviews to be a Reviewer. It depends upon the quality of the reviews performed. After being assigned the Reviewer status the theme reviewer badge list is updated twice a year.